Intermittent Fasting Results Guide

I am going to start this post with a disclaimer:

All my inspiration for Intermittent Fasting comes from Martin Berkhan. It was only by reading his superb writings that I have been able to write about it myself. I recommend that you start over at his site if you want to get up to speed on the basics of Intermittent Fasting.

So, onto my own writing…

This post explains the range of my experiences with Intermittent Fasting, it is a work in progress and will be added to.

A brief outline of Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent Fasting (the Leangains approach) is a simple approach to feeding the body. You split the day into two phases, an eating phase and a non-eating phase. The eating phase lasts around 8 hours, therefore the fasting phase lasts about 16 hours. This doesn’t mean that you eat for the whole of the 8 hour block!

What differences do I notice with varying phase timings?

I have experimented with various timings of the eating and fasting phases. I most commonly use 1400 to 2200 as my eating phase (although I also use 1200 to 2000 some of the time), and therefore fast from 10 at night till 2pm the next day. This fits with my lifestyle quite nicely, it allows me to train in the morning and see a couple of clients, eat a fantastic lunch (my fast breaking meal), feel renewed and full of energy in the afternoon when I am normally on the computer and then eat lightly for my other two meals. I have gradually worked toward doing it 7 days per week, when for the first couple of months I had at least one day off, normally a Thursday, which I spend with my 3 year old daughter, this felt like a day off to me and even though I didn’t go crazy and have a cheat day, it felt like a holiday from something that I was partly struggling with (See the section about hunger below). But since my internal evaluations have changed about hunger, I no longer feel that I need to do this, but at the same time I don’t kick myself if I have a day off.

I also manipulate my timing over the weekend to fit in with my mountain biking; I have my last meal on Friday night at about 8pm (this means Friday is a shorter eating day) and then eat again at about 12noon Saturday, I tend to have a short day again and finish eating between 4 and 6pm (Saturday is frequently a resting day, so only eating 2 meals is easy and satisfying), then Sunday comes along and I eat a break-fast when I get up, this is primarily due to the experience of trying to do mountain biking when fasted. It’s not pleasant, think inability to concentrate, slow reactions, limited energy supply and frustration. This is to be expected as I ride for longer than an hour most times, so I quickly run out of energy. Eating breakfast before I ride sorts this. When I finish riding I have one or two meals within the next 3 hours and that’s it for the day. This normally means a slightly longer fast than 16 hours, from Sunday to Monday (last meal at 1600 or so Sunday, break fast at 12 or 1400 on Monday, equals 20 or 22 hours fast). This slightly extended fast now feels easy. That is very different to how it was when I first started.

How do I deal with hunger?

I remember the first time I read the Leangains guide I was surprised that Martin says he doesn’t experience hunger during his fast. And that most of his clients don’t, and those that do experience light hunger only. I am not one of those people. I get hungry, real growling hunger. I wake up hungry and I stay hungry until I eat. There are, however, some actions I can take that modify my hunger, note that I said modify, not remove. I have become a frequent coffee and tea drinker, where before I hardly drank either (I am not looking forward to coming off the caffeine  and having the withdrawal headache!). I find that caffeine based drinks both help me concentrate, and reduce my feelings of hunger. This is to be expected, as caffeine helps stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, which slows down or stops digestion.

Another factor that helps me deal with my hunger is training in the morning. I have trained with both weights and done cardio in the fasted state (although I take a 10g dose of protein and 5g of Creatine. I haven’t yet used BCAA powder before training, as rightly suggested by Martin, as I have a shedload of protein in stock and am working my way through that before I get any more supplies in!). I like to limit my cardio in this state to 30 mins or less of steady and fairly easy running. I have found that more than this is too hard, and leaves me sore and drained, and also lacks the requisite quality. I am in training for a double marathon at the end of Summer 2011, and that’s the only reason I am doing any cardio as a part of my training. If I was just training for physique I wouldn’t do ANY cardio, when using Intermittent Fasting to reduce body fat cardio is just not needed.

Another thing that really deals with hunger is keeping myself busy. Sounds obvious, but when I am occupied I don’t really notice my hunger. Not that the hunger goes, I just don’t really notice it. Fortunately I have no end of work to do right now (writing and researching this blog, and putting together a business – superbootcamps.com – that will help me in my goal of moving to the French Alps) so keeping busy is easy.

The final factor in the hunger issue for me has been a change in belief about hunger. I am going to go into this in more detail in a future post as I think there are some good lessons for us all to learn from changing a belief about something (that’s just the NLP’er in me wanting to have its role), but basically what has happened is my thought/reaction pattern to hunger has changed from ‘ahh, I’m hungry, that’s bad and I really should be eating because I am wasting my muscles, getting weak, going into the hunger/low blood sugar cycle and slowing down my metabolism’, to ‘ahh I’m hungry, that’s good, because that means I’m burning fat AND I’ll get to eat fairly soon, and really enjoy my food,and go into anabolic overdrive’!

Suffice to say, this last part has made being hungry quite an interesting experience, almost to the point sometimes that I feel a touch of loss about ending the fast, as I am enjoying the process of feelings and thoughts that result from hunger!

I am going to end this post here, as I like to keep my posts to around 1000 words and we are up to 1200, so I will leave you with some of the questions I will be answering in future posts:

How do I arrange my training to fit my diet?

If I train fasted will my muscles wilt?

How do I split my nutrients?

Do I eat differently on resting and training days?

Can I eat sweet food?

What changes in physique have I noticed with using I.F.?

What things have I learned about myself as a result of doing this?

Happy Eating,

George
http://superbootcamps.com

Related posts:

1. Intermittent Fasting and Aging
2. Fat Loss Fundamentals
3. Myo Reps Programs for Muscle Building and Hypertrophy